Mayday and Omar Deghayes
Mayday obviously always makes me feel confident. It is the sense of history as well as the sunshine and th feeling that I have survived another winter. So today I am confident that public outcry can get something done about Omar Deghayes.

If you go to Democracy Now! and type in "Omar Deghayes" you get the following:

UK Resident Reports Widespread Torture At Guantanamo
Meanwhile another detainee being held at Guantanamo Bay has come forward to reveal that he has been systematically tortured while in U.S. custody. A Libyan-born, British resident named Omar Deghayes said that during his time in detention he has been sodomized by U.S. guards, given electrical shocks, was nearly drowned and was treated so brutally that he was left blind in one eye. Deghayes also accuses US and Pakistani interrogators of beating him, smearing his face with human excrement, starving him of food, and withdrawing light and clothing. On his detention in Afghanistan he said, "The camp looked like the Nazi camps that I saw in films ... Lying on the floor of the compound, all night I would hear the screams of others in the rooms above us, as they were tortured and interrogated." He went on to say, "My number would be called out, and I would have to go to the gate. They chained me, and put a bag over my head, dragging me off for my own turn. They would force me to my knees for questioning. They would threaten me with more torture." Deghayes was seized in Pakistan in April 2002 by armed local intelligence officers but his lawyer says he was detained as a result of mistaken identity. Attorney Clive Stafford Smith said of his client, "He has been treated worse in Guantanamo than any other person I have come across."

Omar Deghayes is a 35 year old married man and father, originally from Libya, but a resident of Saltdean since 1987, who was arrested in Pakistan and has been held in solitary confinement in Camp Delta, Cuba since 2002.


He has not been charged with any offence and the only evidence produced against him is a video tape,which the Americans claim links Mr Deghayes with terrorists but which experts have dismissed as a case of mistaken identity.

His lawyer Clive Stafford Smith claims his client has been tortured by American soldiers, leaving him blind in one eye.

The British Government, which had previously claimed it could not help, as he is a British resident, not a British national, has bowed to public pressure, and agreed to present the family's concerns about his treatment to US officials.

We his supporters believe he should be charged and tried or released back to the U.K., and not to Libya from whence his family fled persecution and where he would certainly be in mortal danger. We do not claim his innocence or guilt but his human rights and entitlement to due process.

What you can do
1. Write a letter of support to Omar, in as many languages as you can, and e-mail it to jackie.chase@virgin.net who will send it on to his lawyer, and copy it to Charles Clarke and Jack Straw if you wish.
2. Send gifts of eye-patches, shampoo, toothpaste, books, particularly poetry, music, boxer shorts, and anything else you can think of to Omar Deghayes,c/o Brighton Peace and Environment Centre, 39-41 Surrey St, Brighton BN1 3PB. His lawyer will despatch these things to Camp Delta.

"What can you do for my son?"
I went to a meeting - well I couldn't last a whole
election without at least one! - for all the
candidates in Brighton. The Tories contemptuously
refused to turn up. The Labour guy looked embarrassed, and so he should be. Actually he also looked a bit past his sell-by, not because he was old but he just seemed politically exhausted apologising and justifying all the time rather than offering any hope.

The Socialist candidate Phil Clarke was excellent
(well it was him I went to see really) and the poor
libdem seemed very nice but tied herself in knots (no
not literally though that would have been fun). There
was also a Green Party candidate who seemed very nice
in a vague sort of way.

The meeting came alive when a woman got up to ask them what they could do for her son. His name is Omar
Deghayes and he has been held in the American torture
camp at Guantanamo Bay for three years and with
incredible bravery got his story - which is a horror
story of torture and sodomy by our allies- out to the
British press. I don't want to imagine how the guards
will treat him now. .

Well the libdem lady was impassioned but confused,
admitting she had done nothing about this but saying
she would like to, Phil Clarke has been involved in
the campaign to publicise Omar's case in Brighton and
he spoke with passion about it. And the Labour guy,
I'm afraid "useless" is the politest thing I can say
about his performance.

And that is the end of this party political broadcast.

http://socialistteachers.org.uk

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
I took the family to see the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy preview screening last night (free tickets!) and it works very well. The opening sequence with the dolphins is stunning.

It includes a lot of the best ideas from the original and adapts the story enough to make it interesting to a group of people who know it by heart. Steven Fry (the book) and Alan Rickman (Marvin)are inspired pieces of casting.

My daughter was disappointed that Hollywood insisted
on a love story between Trillian and Arthur, she
thought a love story between Arthur and Ford would
have been more fun :)

Marvin is a revelation, a sort of antidote to Darth V

Film of disruptive pupils on Channel 5
If I put a camera in my class on a good day and filmed them working away for an hour that would not be good television. It would be an accurate reflection of what goes on in a lot of schools a lot of the time. It would not help Michael Howard's moral panic over school discipline being "out of control"

I would of course get the parents' written consent before selling it to any really bored TV company interested in buying it, and I would never film pupils without *their* consent either.

Sensationalising this issue is wrong. Filming pupils who want attention and putting it on national television is wrong.

If anyone thinks that means I tolerate disruption in my lessons I suggest you spend five minutes in my classroom before making any such rash assertion!

Politics of fear
Crime "is out of controwelle"
Immigration "is out of controwelle"
Government spending, you guessed it, "is out of controwelle"

Actually I think it is only Michael Howard who is "is out of controwelle"

And the other lot are no better,

They threaten us that if you don't vote for the New Tories the old Tories will get back in (horror!)

I still think the award winning documentary on the politics of fear had it right. These jokers have no dreams to offer us, only nightmares.

"It's not racism darling!"
My father was born in Canada and my mother's family were ethnic Italians from Austria. Because I was born in the UK and look "English" nobody has ever had the bloody cheek to tell me I should "go back where I came from" (which was Croydon).

Black and Asian people, people from ethnic minorities who do not look or sound "English" have some drunken Alf Garnett telling them that every day of the week.

You see "It's not racism darling it's just common sense".

A clematis named Princess Diana
I couldn't make this up. I have a clematis named Princess Diana planted last year because it is supposed to be good at climbing and besides it is cheap because the line is not as popular as it was. I also have a Camelia in the same bed. This was not a good idea I now realise.
Two weeks ago the Camelia flowered and I have to say even newly flowered like that it is disappointing as it looks blown and faded already.
The clematis seems to have died.

Irony Bypass
Our newsagent delivered the Telegraph today, they do this once in a way as acruel and unusual punishment to remind me to go and pay the bill. It works.

The Telegraph are running a gambling game based on the stock market. Readers have only to match their lucky numbers against selected numbers on the stock market to win 5000 pounds.

Many people read the Telegraph, including me, but there is a driving ideology binding the people who produce the newspaper and the majority of its readers. They think they are a cut above Sun readers and their version of Bingo is for people who follow the stock market.

They have no sense of irony. Their ideology is the ideology of capitalism, the market is the answer to all of society's problems. Those number on the stock market pages represent the lives and livelihoods of millions.

For us a few points up or down mean the difference between having a future or a livelihood or finding ourselves like the Rover families finding they have been betrayed and robbed. For the speculator those figures only mean their gamble has come off or it hasn't.

That is their morality, yet they are prepared to satirise the casino society they worship in a little game. If you questioned their morality they would stare at you as if you were mad. They think their morals are superior to anybody's.

Some facts on migration
We are being "swamped with immigrants" but the actual figures are:

Population: 60,270,708 (July 2004 est.)
Population growth rate: 0.29% (2004 est.)
Birth rate: 10.88 births/1,000 population (2004 est.)
Abortion rate: 3 abortions/1,000 population
Death rate: 10.19 deaths/1,000 population (2004 est.)
Net migration rate: 2.19 migrants/1,000 population (2004 est.) *
Ethnic groups: per 1,000 population there are:
English 815,
Scottish 96,
Irish 24,
Welsh 19,
Ulster 18,
West Indian, Indian, Pakistani, and other 28
Religions: Anglican and Roman Catholic 40 million, Muslim 1.5 million, Presbyterian 800,000, Methodist 760,000, Sikh 500,000, Hindu 500,000, Jewish 350,000

* It should be noted that half of the immigrants to the UK are from Europe.